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<h1>Zend Framework</h1>
<h2>Programmer's Reference Guide</h2>
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<div id="learning.plugins.intro" class="section"><div class="info"><h1 class="title">Introduction</h1></div>
    

    <p class="para">
        Zend Framework makes heavy use of plugin architectures. Plugins allow for easy extensibility
        and customization of the framework while keeping your code separate from Zend Framework&#039;s
        code.
    </p>

    <p class="para">
        Typically, plugins in Zend Framework work as follows:
    </p>

    <ul class="itemizedlist">
        <li class="listitem">
            <p class="para">
                Plugins are classes. The actual class definition will vary based on the component --
                you may need to extend an abstract class or implement an interface, but the fact
                remains that the plugin is itself a class.
            </p>
        </li>

        <li class="listitem">
            <p class="para">
                Related plugins will share a common class prefix. For instance, if you have created
                a number of view helpers, they might all share the class prefix
                &quot;<span class="classname">Foo_View_Helper_</span>&quot;.
            </p>
        </li>

        <li class="listitem">
            <p class="para">
                Everything after the common prefix will be considered the <em class="emphasis">plugin
                    name</em> or <em class="emphasis">short name</em> (versus the &quot;long name&quot;,
                which is the full classname). For example, if the plugin prefix is
                &quot;<span class="classname">Foo_View_Helper_</span>&quot;, and the class name is
                &quot;<span class="classname">Foo_View_Helper_Bar</span>&quot;, the plugin name will be simply
                &quot;<span class="classname">Bar</span>&quot;.
            </p>
        </li>

        <li class="listitem">
            <p class="para">
                Plugin names are typically case sensitive. The one caveat is that the initial letter
                can often be either lower or uppercase; in our previous example, both &quot;bar&quot; and
                &quot;Bar&quot; would refer to the same plugin.
            </p>
        </li>
    </ul>

    <p class="para">
        Now let&#039;s turn to using plugins.
    </p>
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